Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Hendren's Hyperbole! Episode 44 -- Maintenance blogs

This past week, over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was just wasting some time surfing the internet -- you know, checking out the Golfdom Daily as I am sure you do quite often -- and I started thinking about the pros and cons of maintenance departments keeping a maintenance blog to help keep members and the public aware of what is happening on the course.

I’ll just start off by saying personally I think the pros by far outweigh the cons. It makes sense to me that by keeping an updated blog about what is happening from a maintenance perspective members and especially greens committees would be less likely to constantly hound you about what is going on and what projects are in the works. Another positive aspect is that superintendents from other courses in your community could check out your blog and possibly use the information you are posting as inspiration for projects at their course. To build on that idea, if a super is having problems convincing the powers that be about a certain project your success story posted on your blog might just be enough to tip the scale in their favor.

As far as cons go I think the biggest issue would be time. Keeping up a blog doesn’t have to take a lot of time but it does take time nonetheless and as a fellow super I know how valuable time is. Even though you have complete control over what is posted on the blog I could see how posting projects and information about your club for the world to view might also be considered negative by some.

Overall, I think the positives by far outweigh the negative regarding a maintenance blog. Shoot me a quick comment and let me know what you think and let me know if you currently have a maintenance blog or are planning on starting one.